"Normally I would have you morph and then I would carry you, but it doesn't seem like you can do that, so I'll have to do with this combination of morphs." Chris looked over at the ocean. "It isn't too far away-"

"Chris," Ryan interrupted from Christopher's shoulder. "Have you seen your muscles recently? You can easily carry anyone."

Chris laughed at that and looked at the bat upon his shoulder. "I didn't always look like this. I was the runt in my family."

Ollie wondered how Chris was going to carry him as Nick left in the boat, paddling with gusto. Poor Nick, it must be so hard that he couldn't fly when everyone else could.

"I'll try to gain time by running through the wooded stretch." Nick called out as he started to become smaller and smaller, at a surprisingly fast rate.

"You ready?" Chris picked Ollie up easily and launched into the air. Using two arms, Chris made sure he was balancing Ollie's weight evenly.

"Do you do this a lot?" Ollie asked from his position. He was kind of curled up, Chris's hand beneath his wings, and the other one on the underside of his knees.

"No, why?" Chris easily flapped high above the fluffy clouds. The balls of cotton were spruced about, tufts of them spreading like cotton candy the mid-day sun illuminating the water vapor. The clouds might look fluffy, but Ollie knew from personal experience that they were moist and clung to one's skin.

"Because you're holding a human, a bat, and yourself on wings you didn't know you could use while in human form." Ollie turned his head to see the gorgeous view below him.

"Can you go slower X?" Ryan shouted as he frantically held onto the fabric of Chris's shirt. Chris paused in the air, flapping his wings rapidly to stay in place. Taking advantage of the still air, Ryan flew into Ollie's hands. "This will sound weird, but can you hold me so I don't go flying away?"

Ollie simply nodded and carefully gripped the tiny bat that was Ryan. Once Chris saw that Ryan was safe, he angled himself again and glided.

"Nick will meet us in an hour probably," Chris told Ollie. "He can only go so fast in morph."

"So what am I doing?" Ollie asked as they flew straight through a cloud.

"You're going to be trained by Thomas and myself." Chris dove towards the ground, aiming for a quaint lodge.

Chris hovered again, letting his wings vaporize with such grace. When Ollie thought about it, Chris wasn't his age, twenty six. If it wasn't evident of the crinkles around his eyes, Chris looked to be in his mid-forties. He carried himself in a way of someone with confidence and wisdom. Ollie found himself wanting to be like Chris, especially since he was more graceful in his shapeshifting.

Ryan transformed back accidentally while still in Ollie's hands. He ended up slightly crushing Ollie, who let out a gasp of shock. Smiling, Chris helped both of them up, teasing Ryan a little in the process.

"Maybe wait till the person who is carrying you lets you go?"

Ryan took the teasing and laughed hard. It was easy to see that all the people Ollie had met so far had close bonds. Must have to do with nearly getting killed by the same person.

Whoosh.

"What was that?" Ollie tilted his head towards the lodge. "Sounded like fire."

"Probably Thomas," Ryan shrugged as he walked up the wooden steps to the door.

"Wait, two things. Does Thomas live here, and does he normally play with fire?" Ollie was less inclined to enter the building.

"Yes and yes." Chris gestured for Ollie to walk up to the front. "We all live here, but everyone else is off in the different areas right now. They will be back by dark."

Ollie finally took the steps into the lodge and took a look around. Hallways branched out to the sides, and a stairway went up and down in front of them. A small living room occupied the front, with couches and chairs and pillows strewn about. It looked lived in, but it also looked neat.

"Grace insisted on the ice sculpture." Ryan pointed at the figurine made of ice, miraculously not melting. "She also insisted that we learn to ice skate. So don't be surprised if she gives you lessons. Says it helps with balance."

"I think Nick was the only one who was half decent at it to start." Chris led them down a hallway to the right of the stairs. Pausing at a door, Chris waited for Ollie to catch up. "Since we don't have a ton of room, you'll have to bunk with Ryan and Nick until we can expand this place. Is that okay?"

Ollie nodded as he peered into the room. It had various mechanical trinkets about and there were already two beds stacked on each other. A third lay off to the side with a green blanket on top.

"I have the bunk bed, so you can have the top or the bottom, I don't mind." Ryan pointed at the three beds. "The single one is Nick's. Said it was his priority because he is older and he can't fly."

Chris closed the door and continued walking down the corridor. "Ryan and Nick are practically brothers, so I hope you don't mind the pillow fights that happen from time to time."

"Pillow fights?" Ollie raised an eyebrow.

"We like to have fun here!" Ryan protested. "Chloe joined us once and had a blast might I add."

"Who are all these people?" Dazed by the amount of names, Ollie wondered if he would remember all the names.

"All the morphs who have been rescued," Chris replied as they reached the back door. "Don't worry, you'll know all the names very quickly."

Outside there was a patio area that had steps leading down to a stone brick pathway. A firepit and outdoor seating lay to the left and to the right had a concrete area with a flaming bird? The bird swooped and dove, twisting through various hoops. On occasion, the bird would flare up in fire and shoot at a distant target.

"I take it that bird is a morph too?" Ollie was starting to get a grip on all of these things.

"Phoenix to be exact," The bird twisted his head to look directly at Ollie. "Yes I can hear you," He said when Ollie looked shocked. "All birds have excellent hearing, but birds of prey have exceptional hearing."

The phoenix stopped flaming and with a whoosh, transformed back into his human counterpart. "My name is Thomas, glad to have you here." Thomas had the look of a fighter with his vest and boots. He seemed to have a knack for fire red, as his pants, shirt, and even wristbands rocked the color.

"Ollie here needs some flight training." Ryan nudged Ollie forward when he didn't say anything.

Thomas tilted his head in confusion, his blonde hair shifting a little. "Hasn't he flown before?"

"It's complicated," Chris replied, wincing at the thought of trying to explain it all. "Ollie isn't exactly a shapeshifter yet. All he has ever had are these wings."

"Oh wow." Thomas's eyes shot open when he saw the large dragonfly wings Ollie owned. "He's always had them?"

"Yes," Ollie didn't like being talked about in third person when he was right there.

Chris gave him an apologetic smile and turned back to Thomas. "Yes, but I believe that he can morph, he just doesn't know how yet. I was able to achieve what he has always had, by combining my eagle wings with my human body."

"Do you know the tactics we could pull off with that!?" Thomas looked rather excited at that information.

"That is why I told you," Chris kept calm. "However, it is quite difficult to pull off, and the results can be... undesirable."

Ollie tuned out the next part of the conversation, as he had already heard it once. Instead, he looked at the forest and the paths sprouting from the small clearing. He wondered what they led to, maybe training areas. The paths were well worn, and no plants sprouted from its surface. A clear indicator that this area was well used.

"Ollie, bud. You still there?" Ryan was talking to him.

"Oh, sorry I must have tuned out for a second there." Giving a small laugh, Ollie felt embarrassed by getting caught fazing out. It often happened to him.

"That was more than a few minutes, Ollie." Chris gave him a worried look. "That was nearly an hour. In fact, you can see Nick over there."

Ollie's eyes followed where Chris pointed and noticed a deer walking through the forest. No, a reindeer. It was a magnificent beast, not at all like the fairy tales. The deer Nick had shapeshifted into had a huge crown of horns and large cloven hooves. Long fur lined the base of the neck and head, while shorter fur covered the rest of his body.

Nick trotted slowly in, before collapsing on the ground with his legs tucked underneath him. "I need a few minutes." He gasped out, flank heaving. "That took way more out of me than I expected."

"You should know," Chris turned towards Ollie. "That when we shapeshift, we lose a little energy. So if we are exhausted, we can't transform back."

"We also don't keep injuries between morphs." Thomas chimed in. "It's an easy way to save yourself from fatal wounds, but you can't shift back for a couple days because its such a drain."

"How do you know that?" Ollie got a little worried that they might be battle hardened.

"I know." Chris said quietly, making even Nick stop huffing. The tone he had indicated that he was about to breach a testy subject. "My brother stabbed me in my sleep when I was a human. It was fatal, I felt it by how much blood I was losing. I morphed as quickly as possible and barely escaped. I spent a whole week as an eagle, too weak to do anything else.

"Part of me wondered if I would be stuck as an eagle, since my human body would have surely died. The other part of me wished that it had died, and I could just spend the rest of my life hunting fish and mice.

"I only risked shifting back when I saw my brother trying to do the same thing to Nick as he did to me. To eliminate all morphs."

An eerie silence followed Chris's revelation, making Ollie wonder what it would like to nearly die. Surely not as horrible as knowing your own brother tried to murder you, and continually trying.

"I thought Charles would have tried to help me through all the hatred I got." Chris accidentally slipped, telling his brother's real name instead of what he had been dubbed. "Instead he became worse than them, becoming... evil."

No one noticed Nick shifting back into his human form until he put an arm around Chris's shoulder. "We all would have done the same thing, had we been in your shoes."

Everyone nodded in agreement, even Ollie, now that they knew what really happened that night.

"Don't let me bring you down." Chris pasted a smile on his face and shrugged off Nick's arm. "You have some training to do Ollie!"

Thomas looked happy to have a new prodigy, and he gestured for Ollie to follow him down one of the paths. "The others are doing various training exercises, playing games, gathering supplies, or building. At this moment you will train to get your strength back up, but don't worry. You'll get to do everything else."

Ollie wasn't worried about to doing anything else, he was more worried in the fact that he had no stuff. He had no clothes other than the ones on his back, and no belongings to his name. Wondering if it would be wise to get bikers gloves made Ollie laugh. Even Thomas had some, although his were charcoal grey with two t's etched in white on them.

"Thompson."

"What?" Ollie shook his head.

"My last name is Thompson, that's why I have these on my gloves." Thomas held up his left hand to demonstrate. "I saw you looking."

Nodding, Ollie continued to follow Thomas down the well worn path, until they came to a very large clearing. It looked like it was man made, as it was easily a kilometer wide. Large hoops stood at various heights, and there were bars on the trees. Some sort of mechanism stood at one edge, looking like it was designed to shoot things.

Thomas led Ollie to the center on a squishy mat that was an ugly orange brown color.

"This is slime." Thomas told Ollie, laughing when Ollie gave a look of disgust. "Don't worry, it's a special type designed to break falls from any height. It doesn't stick to you, so it is ideal for flying training."

Ollie had to admit that sounded like a nice landing pad. If he did fall, it wouldn't be painful. However, Ollie severely doubted that he would fall. His muscles might be weak, but he hadn't forgotten how to fly.

"So I'm going to transform so you can follow my wing movements." Thomas scratched his head. "I don't know how to do the in between morph yet, and if Chris had trouble, I certainly will." Thomas transformed in a whoosh of fire and started hovering in place.

"Is Chris good?" Ollie stretched his own wings to their launch position.

"He's not good, he's the best." Thomas circled Ollie once. "Good, now start flapping."

Ollie complied as Thomas continued. "He has the most elegant transformation, and has the most control over both his bodies. He learns quickly and rarely tires. You should try to strive to be like him, we all do."

As Thomas talked, he didn't quite notice that Ollie was a few feet off of the ground. The dragonfly wings strained slightly, but they didn't give way.

"Nice!" Thomas had to fly a little higher to keep up with Ollie. "When your wings get really strong you can race."

"Race?" Ollie looked around as his wings flapped at a dizzying rate. Much like a humming bird's, his wings flapped into a blur.

"It's what we flyers like to do." Thomas admitted, swooping around the small area. "If you're lucky you can beat Chris, although I'm pretty sure he lets people beat him."

"Chris seems like a nice guy." Ollie hovered in place, making Thomas work extra hard in his flight patterns.

"He's the best greatest. Especially after what he went through." Thomas sighed and let his wing feathers temporarily light on fire. "I probably would be bitter and want revenge, but Chris is too nice to do that."

As Ollie mulled over that, he felt pain shoot through his wings before he plummeted to the ground. All he remembered was Thomas shouting out his name and diving after him before his world blacked out.